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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Reading Mrs. Dalloway

What a busy week, and it's only Wednesday! I started a new job, which may have yoga in the middle of it! I posted a new poetry feature at Escape Into Life, Julie E. Bloemeke, with figurative art by Dorothy Grostern. We did our taxes!--filed (electronically) and paid (postally). We updated our daughter's FAFSA. And I had a fantastic time working with the playwright, Peter Macklin, director, Duane Boutte, and the fine actors in a staged reading of A Different Time, "a gay-themed play," as it says on the program, sponsored by The Prairie Pride Coalition and ISU's Department of Theatre and Dance.

And I've been reading Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, inside The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, edited by Francine Prose, which is an excellent way to read it. I particularly loved re-encountering "The Garden Party," by Katherine Mansfield, in its pages. Also, I have images of The Hours, the movie based on the Michael Cunningham book, stuck in my head. (I still need to read the book!) And here's something that makes this a Random Coinciday in the blog. In both The Hours and A Different Time a guy falls out of a window. (On purpose.)

The lovely painting of Woolf, above, is by Roger Fry. Here's Virginia in fur. She had an interesting life, with lots of suffering in it, alas, and while she did not fall out of a window, she did walk into a river with stones in her pocket. (On purpose.) Sadly, I have a poem about that, because that seems to be what happens. "A Foreign Body," in Menacing Hedge. Well, this has taken a turn. But I'll be very busy again tomorrow.

About Me

"You must change your life," said Rilke. So that's what I keep doing. I've been an encyclopedia editor, a poetry editor, an actor and director, a library clerk, and an assistant professor of English. Now I'm a freelancer, work part time in a library, blog "eight days a week," study the random, tend perennials, and listen to birdsong.